Sony PlayStation Network restart in Japan blocked by government

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Sony’s PlayStation Network began its phased restoration process on Saturday, returning service first to parts of the U.S. and then to Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand, and Australia. However, there’s one place where service has yet to be restored, and that’s in Sony’s own territory of Japan.

After three weeks without PSN service, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai announced on Saturday that the phased restoration process had begun. A mandatory firmware update on PS3 consoles was required to restore PSN service. While millions of people around the world were racing to change their passwords and download the firmware update, customers in Japan were still waiting for the news that service would be back online for them.

Sony is not allowed to restart its PSN network in Japan until it proves it has provided additional security measures, according to a report from Nikkei. Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry Department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said that he met with Sony on May 6 and May 13 and that he wants two things from the company before allowing PSN service to come back online in Japan.

First, he wants to make sure Sony is doing everything it can to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Nobutani said that when he met with Sony on May 13, the company hadn’t met the measures it said it would in its May 1 press conference, which gave Nobutani cause to worry. He said he couldn’t go into detail about what the exact issues were for security reasons.

The second thing Nobutani is concerned about is how Sony will regain its “consumer confidence” in Japan. The network didn’t just go down, customers’ personal data and credit card data was also stolen, leaving many customers wary of trusting the company ever again.

Perhaps Japan is using all the other countries that are back online as guinea pigs to see if more problems ensue before it restores service to its own country. Although most features and services are now active, like Qriocity, Sony Online Entertainment, and online play, the PlayStation Store is still unavailable. Sony said it might take until May 31 for all the services to come back.